


Bottled Up

by Brumeier



Series: Bite Sized Fic 2019 [66]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Angst and Feels, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Forgiveness, M/M, Memory Loss, Prompt Fill, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-28
Updated: 2019-08-28
Packaged: 2020-09-28 05:44:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20420879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brumeier/pseuds/Brumeier
Summary: LJ Comment Fic for Out of Time prompt:Any, any, If I could save time in a bottle....In which Rodney is determined to uncover John's secret as their relationship wanes, and what he discovers changes everything.





	Bottled Up

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vanillafluffy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanillafluffy/gifts).

> Also written for Hurt/Comfort Bingo: Abandonment Issues

“John?”

Rodney stuck his head through the door, but the apartment was dark. He slipped in and closed the door behind him, moving as silently as he could manage. Once inside he clicked on the tiny penlight he’d brought along, too afraid of being seen to use anything more powerful.

John’s apartment was as familiar to Rodney as his own during the day but at night, draped in layers of shadow, it became a funhouse version of itself. Furniture loomed out at him. Area rugs twisted around his feet. Things were either too close or too far away from where Rodney thought they should be, so he moved slowly.

It seemed to take Rodney hours to reach his goal: the armoire in the bedroom.

Like the rest of John’s furniture, it was simple and understated. Function over form. It was also the only thing in the entirety of the apartment that John kept locked. The only thing he refused Rodney access to.

_It’s personal_, John had said. _Maybe when we’ve known each other longer._

The thing was, Rodney wasn’t entirely sure how long he and John had even been together. It seemed like a long time to him, but he couldn’t pin down a date, couldn’t really remember how they’d even met. He knew it had been some sort of meet-cute thing on the subway, but only because he’d heard John tell the story so many times.

He knew he was bad at remembering things like important dates and people’s names, but Rodney would be hard-pressed to recall a single milestone in his and John’s relationship. That was telling, wasn’t it? The sign of a doomed relationship?

If things between them were ending, Rodney wanted to find out once and for all what John was hiding in that armoire.

Rodney clamped the penlight between his teeth and pulled the lockpick kit out of his coat pocket. He’d been practicing with it for the last week. The armoire had a key lock, but he’d never seen the key or had an inkling where John might be keeping it. Learning to pick a lock had seemed more expedient than rifling through everything John owned for one small key that might not even be in the apartment.

It took Rodney several minutes before he heard the tell-tale click. The door on the right popped open just enough for Rodney to get his fingers in there and pull it back. The other door was held in place with an internal latch near the top that Rodney found after feeling along the length of the door. The contents of the armoire were exposed, and Rodney just stared, unsure what he was even looking at.

There were five shelves inside, instead of a rod for hanging clothes. And each shelf was crowded with identical smoky-glassed bottles no more than fifteen inches tall. Rodney was starting to think John was literally a closet alcoholic when he realized the bottles weren’t smoky; whatever was inside them was.

Under the soft glow of the penlight, the contents of the bottles moved in lazy swirls, dark gray and light gray and maybe even navy blue, like bits of shifting fog caught beneath glass. Rodney reached out and picked one up. Beyond the weight of the bottle there was no other substance to it, no sense that anything with mass was inside.

“What is this?” Rodney muttered to himself, penlight still held in his teeth.

The bottle in his hand, like the rest in the armoire, had little cork stoppers in the top. He hesitated a moment before pulling it, his curiosity too great to back out now. The smoke inside drifted lazily out of the bottle and right up Rodney’s nose. It smelled like hot computer circuits and –

_“What are we doing here?” Rodney asked._

_“Don’t you remember? This is where we met.” John gestured at the sign for Traction Avenue in tile on the subway tunnel wall. “Happy anniversary.”_

_Rodney didn’t have time to be confused because John was kissing him, soft and sweet, and Rodney melted into it. He felt guilty for forgetting their anniversary, but John didn’t seem mad._

_“I love you,” John murmured in his ear._

The bottle fell from Rodney’s numb fingers and hit the carpeted floor with a dull _thunk_ before rolling under the bed. He put the penlight on one of the shelves so he could still see and grabbed another bottle, releasing the smoke inside.

_“Do you ever think about having kids?” John asked._

_“I don’t think I’m physically equipped for that.”_

_John rolled his eyes. “You know what I mean. You ever want to be a dad?”_

_Rodney gave that some thought, because John didn’t often want to talk about things that personal._

_“Sometimes. Maybe. My parents were terrible people, and I think anyone who has kids really has to mean it. They really have to want them, and all the responsibility that comes along with that. I don’t know if I’d be any better, and that terrifies me.”_

_“Don’t sell yourself short. You’d be amazing.”_

_Rodney flushed. “What about you?”_

_“I’d love to be a dad someday. To have someone need me that much.”_

_Rodney leaned over and gave John a kiss. “Any kid would be lucky to have you for a dad.”_

Rodney’s chest was tight, his eyes damp. It seemed impossible, something from a child’s fantasy story, but those bottles were full of his memories. Rodney’s. The missing pieces of his relationship with John. There were tender moments of vulnerability, and breathtaking moments of passion. The two of them laughing like idiots over some stupid thing on television, and John openly weeping when his father died.

And he couldn’t seem to stop opening the bottles, wanting to know everything he’d forgotten. Every memory big and small that had somehow been stolen out of his own mind. He reached for another.

“That’s when you first told me you loved me,” John said from the doorway.

Rodney whirled around, feet sending empty bottles clinking against each other. John was leaning there, shrouded in darkness, his expression impossible to read.

“How?” Rodney asked. He gestured angrily to the armoire. “How the hell did you do this?”

“I’ve always been able to. I can’t really explain it.”

“Then explain why. Why would you steal all my memories? I thought our relationship was a dead-fucking-end, and then I find all this!”

Rodney was quivering with rage. He wanted to throw the bottles at John. He wanted to punch him in the face. But the memories he’d gotten back also made him want to hug John and promise him that everything would be okay.

“You’ll leave. Everyone always does. I didn’t want to forget how good it was.” John wasn’t looking at him, and his voice was so soft Rodney almost couldn’t hear what he was saying.

“So you made _me_ forget instead? You selfish asshole! You didn’t think I deserved to know how good things were between us?”

Rodney swept an entire shelf’s worth of bottles off onto the floor, some of them shattering when they hit the empties. He was assailed with memories of their first kiss, their first official date, the first time they attempted to shower together in John’s laughably small shower.

A proposal.

“You asked me to _marry_ you? A me who had no idea we were in a serious relationship because you’d stolen all my memories?” Rodney shoved John in the chest, sent him stumbling into the hall. John didn’t put up a fight. “Did you take the memory back because I said I’d have to think about it, or so you could deny ever having asked? Or maybe you wanted a do-over.”

Rodney forced John into the living room, advanced on him with his anger and disbelief until John was standing near the window, the pale, cold light from the streetlamp below illuminating his face just enough for Rodney to see how twisted up John was. Grief, fear, desperation…they were all fighting for dominance on John’s face.

The two John’s didn’t match up. The one who had stolen Rodney’s memories was a selfish bastard who didn’t care about anything but himself. But the one in Rodney’s memories was warm and thoughtful and loving. 

Which one was real?

“Everyone leaves.” The words were painful to hear in John’s choked, resigned voice, but Rodney didn’t have any room for sympathy.

“You’re fucking right they do.” Rodney turned on his heel and walked out of John’s apartment. He didn’t look back.

*o*o*o*

**Two Weeks Later**

When Rodney got home after teaching Physics classes all day, there was a smoky glass bottle sitting on his doormat. No card, though it was obvious who it was from. Rodney stood there studying it for a good five minutes before picking it up and carrying it inside.

Whatever memory was inside must’ve been important, but Rodney wasn’t sure he wanted to know what it was. He was already heartsick over what had happened. What John had done.

It was another half hour before he decided to open it.

This smoke smelled different, like a salty breeze off the ocean. And Rodney realized that was because it wasn’t his memory this time. It was John’s.

_“Do you believe two people can really love each other forever?” John asked. He was curled up around Rodney, the two of them in bed with the blankets pulled up. He always felt safer talking in the dark, especially about the really important things._

_“No,” Rodney replied. “People aren’t stagnant. They’re always changing. The idea that two people can change and still be compatible is idiotic.”_

_“Pretty cynical.”_

_“You’ve never met my parents.”_

_John wanted to say more, wanted to convince Rodney that it really was possible to want to be with someone for the entirety of a life. People change, yes, but that didn’t necessarily mean they had to grow apart. John had come to expect impermanence in his life. His mother died, his father abandoned him to boarding school, his Air Force buddies died, Nancy left him. No-one stayed._

_He really wanted Rodney to stay, though. Wanted that more than he’d wanted anything in a long time. But he can’t make it happen, not if Rodney doesn’t want the same thing. And so, after Rodney fell asleep that night, John pressed his lips to Rodney’s temple and pulled out the memory of how they first met. It formed itself into a bottle, the memory carefully preserved inside._

_When Rodney eventually leaves and John is on his own again, he’ll be able to breathe it in and remember how good they’d been together._

Rodney sat back in his chair, breathless. John hadn’t stolen his memories out of spite or selfishness, but out of love. A love he was certain he’d never get to keep. Rodney hadn’t seen how deeply John’s fears of abandonment ran. Or maybe he’d lost those memories too.

Maybe it was time to make some new memories. Permanent memories. Rodney loved John, he just needed to learn to trust him again. He reached for his phone.

“John. How soon can you get here? We need to talk.”

Talk they did, for hours – about their relationship fears, their pasts, what they wanted for their future. And cried. And kissed. John promised not to steal any more of Rodney’s memories, and Rodney promised that the next time John proposed he’d have a definitive answer.

It was a night Rodney would _never_ forget.

**Author's Note:**

> **AN:** When I saw this prompt, I thought...how can I interpret it in an unexpected way? This fic is the result of that, and I was worried because Rodney got so angry I wasn't sure how to get him and John back together. Luckily John made an appropriate gesture, and Rodney realized what was motivating John. Whew!


End file.
